We have tried a number of winter sports during our time in Norway, but the two we’ve been doing consistently are cross country skiing and curling. The skiing is a natural fit since it’s Norway’s national pastime, and we’ve written about it a couple of times in the past (here, here, and here). As for […]

We are often asked what is the best part of our Norwegian life, and hands down the answer is the amount of time we get to spend outside. Norway makes friluftsliv — the Nordic concept of getting outdoors — a national priority by investing in infrastructure and access to nature. If you had told me a year […]

Gavin and Allison Fall Down is a recurring series where we try Norwegian winter sports and recount our shortcomings for your amusement. This week: Short Track Speed Skating. Previous editions: curling, ski jumping, bobsledding, cross country skiing, dogsledding Every week on the way to our curling matches,[1] we walked past the outdoor speed skating oval at the ice sports complex, and […]

Gavin and Allison Fall Down is a recurring series where we try Norwegian winter sports and recount our shortcomings for your amusement. This week: Dogsledding. Previous editions: curling, ski jumping, bobsledding, cross country skiing The big attraction for us to Svalbard (click here for the intro-to-Svalbard post) was a 24-hour “mini-expedition” on dogsleds as put together by Svalbard Husky (an “expedition” is […]

Svalbard! Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago found at 78°N, halfway between Oslo and the North Pole.  It is cold, rocky, desolate, and populated with more polar bears than people.  It is home to 2,600 inhabitants, 2,100 of which live in Longyearbyen, the administrative center and the world’s northernmost settlement of more than 100 people.  Very rarely […]

Many months ago, in early autumn, we were afraid of the winter.  Self-deprecating Norwegians were worried about us — surely, we would find Trondheim cold, dark, wet, and depressing, and we would absolutely need to get away in February to somewhere warm and sunny.  This turned out to not be true; we’re loving the winter, and […]

This blog post comes on request from my college roommate Susan Bean, who sent the following inquiry: Hello friend!! So I got a fascinating question yesterday from [another friend]. Apparently she heard recently from a friend that in Scandinavian countries it is normal to leave babies outside in the winter for naptime because the cold […]

The Winter Olympics, which are awesome, open a week from tomorrow.  Most of the time, NBC focuses on sports that have tricks and judges, like figure skating.  This is unfortunate, because figure skating is some repetitive and boring nonsense.  Snowboarding’s even worse, in that it’s repetitive and boring, but also trying really hard to be […]

This month was marked by a visit from our friend Craig, who is a senior in college and was earning college credit for spending his university’s January term traveling around Scandinavia with us. We first met Craig when he was a freshman at the US Naval Academy, and we were assigned to be his sponsor […]